Grow tent or just the corner of the basement

trooper4985(5a)February 6, 2010

I'm finally going to give DWC a try with 4 plants in the basement under a MH bulb. Would I do better with a grow tent or some other enclosure around the setup or will it just be money spent on something that I don't need?

i have a tent which i bought when i first started getting in to indoor gardening but i dont even zip it up any more. i keep it wide open and even put a couple dwc buckets outside the tent. i run a 400w sunmaster neutral deluxe and it gets quite hot. if i zip up the tent then i would have to install my vortex fan which is very loud. if you can use the corner of a room then just do that and save yourself the money.

chinamon, I'm assuming your tent is under a 5x5'. It's a good idea(if you haven't already), to put the ballast outside your tent. Instead of a vortex fan go to home depot and get a 6" inline fan for a heat exhaust. It's silent and cheap. Around $30. I have mine mounted at the bottom port, pulling fresh, cool air in the tent. I leave the ceiling port wide open to naturally exhaust the heat. By doing this, it keeps the humidity up around 60% and the temp around 75 to 78 with the doors zipped up. I had it mounted to the ceiling at first, but the humidity would drop to 30% because it was exhausting all the air too fast.

a 6" inline fan might be quieter but it cannot move the volume of air that a vortex can. i had my vortex mounted at the top port pulling air out of the tent while the bottom ports were allowing cool air in to the tent (warm air rises).

the plants were not very healthy for the 3-4 weeks that i did this. once i kept the tent fully open the plants were fully healthy.

I think there may be good reasons to buy a tent, but I guess I have never needed one. Basically I do not think that the reflection of the walls do all that much for the plants.

I have found that lots of fresh air moving around the plants make them healthier. Besides I like to rotate my plants under the light so that all parts of the plant get equal light. I would just find a tent something that gets in my way.

I have a small 12' x 12' bedroom where I grow all my plants on folding tables (so I do not have to bend over). I pull in a lot of fresh air from the rest of the house into this room as it heats up with all 6 1 KW Hortilux lights going 16 hours a day.

I guess if you need a place where kids or other pesks (:-) cannot get to it, or you need to hide what your growing, it may be a good idea.

chinamon, your tent is only 56CF. at the most. You could use a computer fan to move the air in that small of an area. I'm thinking the reason your plants didn't do well with the vortex fan was it was simply moving too much air. Sounds like an oxymoron but when you move air too quickly, it has NO time for the humidity to build. That is an often overlooked, but crucial element for indoor plant growth.

mr.pepper, normally I would say that having reflective walls is imperative for maximizing light for your plants. However, with 6,000 watts in 144SF. area, you could probably get away with black walls and be just fine. Haha J/K Man that's a lot of light!